On Saturday, February 6th, 2016, students from the West Bloomfield High School (WBHS) Health Science Club attended the Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA) regional conference at Fraser High School. As HOSA competitors, students were expected to professionally present to judges, wear business professional attire, and conduct themselves with decorum the entire day. HOSA is a competition which aims to promote careers in the health industry and to enhance the quality of healthcare for all.

Before the competition, students had to pick an event to compete in and prepare for it. Students have been preparing since September of the school year, all for this one day. Events ranged from making a poster about a health career to taking a test on a subject such as pharmacology, or forensically analyzing a case study of a dead body.

At the competition, students were divided into their various events in different rooms and spent the entire day, from 8:00 am to 3:30 pm, at the competition. The day began with the opening ceremony at 8:30 am, where the state HOSA officers gave speeches and pumped everyone up for the exciting day ahead. At 9:00 am, students dispersed into various rooms of competition.

Mariam Tariq, a sophomore at WBHS competed with Avani Samandur, her partner, in the “Health Career Display” event, where she and her partner had to create a poster about a certain health career and then give a five minute speech about it. When she got to her room, she and Samandur were given an appointment time to come back and give their speech to the judges. Since this appointment time gave them an hour and a half of free time, Tariq and Samandur explored the college and career fair set up by the HOSA regional organization. At the fair, there were booths from Oakland University, Macomb Community College, and many other colleges and organizations that had opportunities for health science students to get involved.

Shion Otsuka and Kapil Vyas, sophomores at WBHS were partners in the “Forensic Medicine” event. In this event, they first had to take a written test that evaluated their team’s understanding of forensic medicine. The scores were then averaged, and the top scoring teams in their event were selected to move on to the second round of competition. Otsuka and Vyas were selected to move on, and had to analyze a case study related to forensic medicine in the second round. Both Otsuka and Vyas had a fabulous time at the competition, as Otsuka said that “Forensic medicine was so fun! We figured out who killed a girl’s boyfriend in the case study, which was very interesting to analyze!” Vyas was also very inspired by HOSA, and said, “It was such a fun experience and really exposed me to different ideas, that I would have never been exposed to before.”

Marissa Stone, a sophomore at WBHS, competited in the “Clinical Speciality” event. Stone shadowed an OB/GYN, and had to digitally record herself doing a “skill” that she learned how to do as a part of her competition. Stone also had to create a portfolio showing career understanding and the documentation. About her competition, Stone says that she “had a lot of fun learning about OB/GYNS, and it really sparked her interest in having a career in the medical field.”

WBHS students qualified to go on to the State Leadership Conference on April 14-15, 2016, in Traverse City, Michigan. Out of the 23 qualifying students, nine students additionally medaled in their competition. In Epidemiology, Elie Huez took 2nd place and Krunal Moradiya took 3rd. In Medical Spelling, Nyteia Tyler took 2nd place, and in Medical Math Jensen Hwa took 2nd place. Rishabh Parekh took 3rd place in Researched Persuasive Speaking, and in Biomedical Debate, the team of Anita Anguelova, Ziri Canela-Morales, Imaan Singh, and Dana Korogodsky took 2nd place.

Congratulations to all of the competitors at HOSA, and good luck at the state competition!